OK, thanks to everyone who has contributed input to this thread - it's been most enlightening.
So, in summary, it seems that the dark art of font rendering is complex and made more so by having to support numerous different operating systems, font engines, GPUs and monitors etc. I am sure JavaFX does a pretty good job already under most circumstances but I (personally) hope things improve further in the future and that the gap between JavaFX font rendering quality and that of native font rendering is narrowed. To this end, there seem to be two main improvements already under development namely: 1. Sub-pixel positioning ( https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-14187 ) 2. Kerning ( https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-7472 ) To assist me in my decision making and planning, would it be possible for someone to answer: 1. When will both (1) and (2) make it into a JDK8 development build? 2. Are there any other plans/techniques to improve font rendering on the horizon for JFX8 or later? As I said, my focus is Windows 7 and Windows 8 at the moment so even if you can only answer within these contexts it would be much appreciated! Thanks, -jct -----Original Message----- From: openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of Phil Race Sent: Friday, 23 August 2013 06:57 To: John Hendrikx Cc: openjfx-dev@openjdk.java.net Subject: Re: Poor quality font rendering On 8/22/2013 1:23 PM, John Hendrikx wrote: > Oh.. I forgot to say this, but... > > Screenshots taken with LCD smoothing on are always gonna end up > looking different on different monitors... if for example your monitor > has slightly different spacing or a different order of the subpixels > (or you rotated it), then the screenshot will look wierd. I prefer to > keep LCD smoothing off as I make screenshots / videos regularly and I > donot know on what system they'll be viewed on. So if one of shots > has particularly bad colored fringes, it is likely you have a monitor > that has a different configuration than mine. Yes. I have a BGR monitor here :-) 90 degrees rotation also invalidates the LCD but it doesn't look as bad as getting RGB<->BGR wrong Devices like the i-whatsit and Android ones don't use LCD and I think that is one reason. OLED displays don't work well with it either. Windows is deficient in that it doesn't provide anyway to set LCD on a per-screen basis and it should. But most about every desktop/laptop is normal rotation LCD in RGB format. -phil.
